Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables xi Introduction to the 2013 Edition xiii Acknowledgments xxxiii Note on Transliteration xxxvii Chapter 1 Life Politics after Chernobyl 1 * Time Lapse 1 * A Technogenic Catastrophe 9 * Nation Building 20 * Experimental Systems 25 * Docta Ignorantia 27 * The Unstoppable Course of Radiation Illness 32 Chapter 2 Technical Error: Measures of Life and Risk 34 * A Foreign Burden 34 * Saturated Grid 36 * Institute of Biophysics, Moscow 39 * Soviet-American Cooperation 41 * Safe Living Politics 49 * Life Sciences 55 * Risk In Vivo 59 Chapter 3 Chernobyl in Historical Light 63 * How to Remember Then 64 * New City of Bila-Skala 66 * Vitalii 67 * Contracts of Truth 69 * Oksana 70 * Anna 72 * Requiem for Storytelling 76 Chapter 4 Illness as Work: Human Market Transition 82* City of Sufferers 82 * Capitalist Transition 92 * Nothing to Buy and Nothing to Sell 94 * Medical-Labor Committees 102 * Disability Claims 107 * Illness for Life 113 Chapter 5 Biological Citizenship 115 * Remediation Models 115 * Normalizing Catastrophe 119 * Suffering and Medical Signs 121 * Domestic Neurology 126 * Disability Groups 130 * Law, Medicine, and Corruption 138 * Material Basis of Health 143 Chapter 6 Local Science and Organic Processes 149 * Social Rebuilding 149 * Radiation Research 151 * Between the Lesional and the Psychosocial 156 * New Sociality 165 * Doctor-Patient Relations 174 * No One Is Hiding Anything Anymore 176 * In the Middle of the Experiment 181 Chapter 7 Self and Social Identity in Transition 191 * Anton and Halia 191 * Beyond the Family: Kvartyra and Public Voice 194 * Medicalized Selves 201 * Everyday Violence 206 * Lifetime 212 Chapter 8 Conclusion 215 Notes 221 Bibliography 239 Index 253

About the Author

Adriana Petryna is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of "When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects" and the coeditor of "When People Come First: Critical Studies in Global Health" (both Princeton).

Reviews

Winner of the 2006 New Millenium Award, Society of Medical Anthropology Co-Winner of the 2003 Sharon Stephens First Book Prize, American Ethnological Society "Petryna's ethnographic approach consciously shapes her account and illuminates it with detail that historians of the future will treasure."--Jeanne Guillemin, Medical Humanities Review "The book presents exceptionally rich anthropological material generated through observations and interviews... The true scope of the human tragedy caused by this man-made catastrophe comes to the fore via biological stories of Petryna's informants."--Larissa Remennick, Journal of the American Medical Association "There is nothing comparable. Very well written, it will be of major interest to readers in risk analysis and risk sociology, science studies, and political science, as well as to anyone interested in the consequences of megatechnologies."--Ulrich Beck, author of World at Risk "[Chernobyl] is a dramatic and important story, and Life Exposed is a compelling book... [A]n important study that will interest a wide anthropological audience."--Jonathan P. Parry, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute